If you don’t know the deathless state, that no self exists, that nothing is born or dies, you will suffer as you live and die.
What happens to you when you die in this dimension? What happens to your body, mind and soul? Is death painful? Maybe these are things you don’t want to think about. Or you might think you have an answer that works for you.
But when you are suddenly faced with a death of someone close to you or when you see your own health deteriorate and you know your time is almost up, you may find your answers were only wishful thinking and not helpful at all.
Most religions have a variation of stories about heaven, hell or in – between that awaits you. Some say that there is a gap where your body dies but the spirit lingers for awhile until it finds a new fetus to enter and begin a new life. What if there is nothing at all?
Moving past spiritual materialism
But how about looking at it from another angle?… that we don’t actually exist as a separate, independent being, so then we are not born and we do not die. You wonder, “How could this be possible when you see that you have an actual body and mental formations?” By examining if everything in this world, including a self, is real.
On a conventional level we construct a self, a life, a soul in our own minds. The evidence in front of us shows us that we have a lifespan. We can see images of ourselves in the mirror and hear ourselves talk. We can experience the world around us. But these are all concepts or thought creations. We are completely deluded by our illusions of who we think we are.
Instead, you have to realize that everything is impermanent – you can’t hold on to anything such as a personality or ego, because it is made up of a steady stream of changing thoughts and feelings…nothing concrete. This unsatisfactory nature of reality creates a feeling of mental suffering because we want make our lives perfect, by keeping what we love and not getting what we hate. Impossible desires. And then there is not self – no self and nothing which can be possessed by a self. If you were raised by another family, your experiences would have created a different personality. If you sell your house, it is no longer your house. Mere labels.
So can something that is a fantasy made up of the elements and a dream state actually die?
For the time being, lets come back to our earthly experience, the practical terms relating to our perception of a being that dies.
Instead of focusing on what happens to us after we die, I want to explore our experiences leading up to the moment of death. After that, it doesn’t matter to me because when you are dead, there is no more consciousness that can experience anything…you won’t know you’re dead. And you won’t notice the moment of death. If you have an aneurysm and die before you hit the ground, you won’t feel the impact of the fall.
But we don’t want it all to end like that, do we. We are looking for something that will compensate us for our loss. We can’t believe that all the investments that were made in the person, like school and relationships were all for nothing. We think, ‘There has to be something afterwards.’ Sorry, but life is not in investment, it is more like consumption. Liken it to a new car. As the years go by, it devalues until you have to junk it. So we come up with ideas about afterlives and such to make us feel better. But regardless of your speculation about what happens to your soul, you have no way of proving your theory in this life or coming back from beyond or another life and sharing it with the rest of us.
Just to consider the soul for a second though. If there was a such an entity left over, that went somewhere, I would picture it as being a formless, impersonal energy without consciousness, returning to Source, to recharge creation.
Then fear of not going to heaven, or going to hell or a next life is removed. Because the soul would not have consciousness or organs of perception, it would not experience the same things as we do in the physical world. If it went to heaven, could it enjoy the blissfulness? And if it went to hell, could it feel the torture of the pitchfork and fire? And how could it transmigrate to another life, if it is not a conscious entity? Because a spirit lacks not only form, but sentient awareness, I would assume it couldn’t suffer. But we could go on all day with theories about what happens to you when you are dead. Its interesting, but not what I want to focus on., which is the process of dying.
Connecting to source and accepting the process of dying removes suffering
To begin with, I base a lot of my views on a few spiritual thinkers: Buddha and the yogi Patanjali were masters at stilling their minds in deep concentration to experience Nirvana in Buddha’s case, and in Patanjali’s, the reflection of pure awareness in his motionless mind. Both have gone beyond… Because their minds were unpolluted by their intellect and the coarseness of this world, they were able to connect with or see pure awareness. And Lao Tzu points to the Tao, which is beyond our mental understanding as well…regardless of our inability to control or comprehend this force with our minds, it continues to inform all of creation in an impersonal manner.
Imagine if you could reach this deep meditation and insight as you are in the process of dying. You would be able to fully accept it with your whole being and have no suffering, fear or regrets. As an expression of Creation, you would accept your fate and let go without worry. There’s a part of a quote from Zen Master Bassui that I like “…your end which is as endless as a snowflake dissolving in pure air.”
There are some people who are able to attain this wisdom, so it’s possible for us to do so too. Through meditative absorption we can also develop our own minds to reach their state of consciousness, which would benefit us in our ability to not only face life, but also death.
Observing a dying being
So even though I talk about overcoming the concept of an individual person that dies, it’s still hard to see because we are attached to what we perceive as a person who is dying. And by ignoring that fact, we would be lacking in compassion. Think of a person you know and try to relate it to my example that I’m going to offer.
I feel terrible when someone I know dies. I don’t even like to see the smallest of beings or plants die either. But it is a fact of life and I just want to give my observations of this fascinating process of dying. I have never been at a person’s deathbed, but I have been around when some of my cats and dogs have died.
I would like to relate a story of my last cat who died. He was about 15 years old. He had kidney issues for two years which we were able to manage so he wasn’t in serious pain.
Kit was dying. For a few weeks at the end of his life, he couldn’t eat anymore. I had to make a puree of his wet food by adding more water and feeding him with a syringe. He was losing a lot of weight. Even so, he would was still involved in his routines like sitting with us on the couch and strolling around. When he went for a walk around the house or in the yard, he would slowly make his way. He slept a little more than usual.
Then one day he wouldn’t let me feed him anymore and obviously I knew he was not going to last much longer. That night, I put him on my bed and he slept beside me. His legs began to strike at the air and shortly after his legs started to tremor. But it wasn’t continuous. He slept a lot. When he was awake, he was resting peacefully. The next day I had to leave the house for an hour. I put him on a blanket on the floor.
When I came back, he was still lying there on his side. I sat with him and petted him. Then for about 10 minutes all four of his legs started moving like he was walking somewhere. It looked like he was having a pleasant stroll. Probably imagining he was walking around the neighborhood.
After that his legs tremored again and he whimpered a little for a few moments. Then his body became motionless. except for his breathing. His eyes were open, and I felt that he was aware of me and when I looked into his eyes he seemed to be at peace…he didn’t look scared at all.
The only thing that changed in the end was his breathing. Now you would expect his lungs to be heaving, with him desperately fighting for his last breath…gulping for air. But that’s not what happened. As he was dying his in-breaths and out-breaths were involuntary movements, like a normal breath. But it was the space between each complete breath that got longer and longer. So 30 seconds…then a minute…then 2 minutes, etc. As he got closer to shutting down, it seemed like forever before he took his next breath. But his body didn’t fight for air. There didn’t seem to be any struggle. The body and mind accepted that it was time to let go. Everything stopping….fading away…the heartbeat disappearing and the body not interested in being nourished by the breath anymore. So his life came to an end with no apparent struggle or pain.
Our body and mind know when it’s time to go
I really thought about this afterwards. Everyone talks about life as being a miracle. And I agree. But the part of life which is the end, is incredible too. The body/ mind will go on until it doesn’t want to anymore and then it stops. It just decides to lie down and die.
And in the case where you can’t die peacefully in your home, like in a violent death, such as in a car accident, the body/mind dies immediately because the pain threshold has been surpassed which allows a being to escape suffering from excruciating pain. For example, if you see a squirrel after getting hit violently by a car, it twists on the road and dies moments later.
It appears death is an inbuilt mechanism to save us from misery. Nature not only makes life, but also ends life so you don’t have to suffer forever. It seems to me to be very compassionate.
We have been convinced that dying is painful so we think we need to kill the “victim” , instead of letting nature take its course
Even though I leave that up to nature to decide the right time….
I was worried that Kit would suffer and even though I didn’t want to euthanize him, it crossed my mind to take him to the vet. Is he suffering too much? You know how you worry. But I knew better. I have had other cats that died naturally, in their own time. And conversely, I have taken cats to the vet to be put to sleep in the past too. I felt way guiltier for doing that, because I didn’t give them the opportunity to die naturally. Back then I believed in an afterlife, so how would this affect their ability to reincarnate or go to their creator? I was stopping them from living out their destiny. I felt like a killer. That it wasn’t my decision to make.
I thought, what if you were a really bad person. And you were basically going to hell for eternity. But by divine grace in the last second of a natural death, you had an epiphany and released your anger and repented for all your transgressions. Your soul was pure at the moment of death and you went to heaven instead of hell.
I also thought about how the chemicals from the drug they inject while euthanizing, might cause more pain than a natural death….forcing the body to die before it wants to. Who knows? I didn’t think I had the right to decide the moment of his death. And I didn’t want to cause stress by taking him away from his home, to die in unfamiliar surroundings….or create stress for the other cats and humans he left behind. Better that they see his lifeless corpse, so they could get closure too.
Thinking about all this afterward, I really felt Kit’s life ended right. He lived for so many years, but it took only a matter of days to deteriorate and pass away. I could picture him when he was a stray jumping my fence and being invited in by all the other cats. He lived fully, climbing trees and having fun. When he wanted to go outside he would stand on his hind legs on the couch and scratch the window feverishly because he wanted to go outside and experience life.. He also wanted to be friends with everyone. He even had a German Shepherd as a neighbor who he used to go sit with. He lived a great life. And in the end, I gave him the chance to die on his own terms and in his own time.
It’s better to hope for someone to live as long as they are meant to live and then die when nature decides to release them. When it’s your time, it’s your time. You don’t need to rush it along. You have to allow the being to fade away into infinity without interfering with the process.
Deathlessness
But wait a minute. What’s this talk of living and dying about anyway? We have to remind ourselves…In reality, no separate being exists or ceases to exist. No beginning or end. There is no self or anything that can be owned by self. There’s no individual person that lives or dies.
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